Thu
March 31, 2005 10:14 AM GMT+02:00 BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - The
opposition MDC said one of its candidates had disappeared in the south of
Zimbabwe after an attack by government supporters on the eve of Thursday's
parliamentary election.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
which is battling President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF in the parliamentary
poll, said Siyabonga Malandu, of Isinza constituency in Matabeleland
Province, disappeared on Wednesday night.

"He last contacted us
at around 7 p.m. last night saying they were under attack. He said ZANU-PF
have started beating up people," MDC Secretary-General Welshman Ncube told
Reuters. "Up to now we have had no contact from him."

Police in
the capital, Harare, said they had not yet received any report on the
incident but would look into it.

Mugabe has promised a big ZANU-PF
win against a weakened opposition in what he says will be a fair poll, but
both the United States and Europe have dismissed the election as a
farce.

Political violence was sharply lower in this campaign than
previous elections in 2000 and 2002 but the MDC charges that its supporters
have been intimidated and the vote will be unfairly skewed in ZANU-PF's
favour.

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Twenty-thousand
hands were raised in the open-palmed salute of Zimbabwe's opposition
yesterday as the crowd shouted the party's slogan in unison: "Change!
Change!" Twenty-five years after this country won its independence from
Britain, a generation of young, urban voters is angry because it can't find
jobs.

"I'm going to vote because I need the MDC [Movement for Democratic
Change] to win," said Valentine Matemadombo, an unemployed 19-year-old who
will be voting for the first time. "Three-fourths of the people don't have
jobs in Zimbabwe, and our parents in the rural areas don't have
food."

Zimbabweans head to the polls today to elect a new parliament in
what many see as a referendum on the 25-year rule of President Robert Mugabe
and his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, which have
been widely accused of destroying the economy and using state-sponsored
violence against the opposition.

Yesterday, Mugabe addressed more
than 10,000 wildly cheering supporters in Harare, promising a free vote and
predicting a "huge, mountainous victory." He has said his campaign is about
protecting Zimbabwe from re-colonization - he has repeatedly accused the
opposition of being stooges of whites and Britain - but such rhetoric means
little to the millions of "born frees" like Matemadombo, those born after
independence.

"I don't have a problem with whites," said Michael Chari,
who is 22 and unemployed. He and his friends are frustrated that despite
being more educated than their parents, they are unable to find employment.
If the opposition doesn't win, he plans to vote with his feet: Like 3
million Zimbabweans before him, he will emigrate.

Local civil society
groups say the vote is unlikely to be free and fair, but they also say
ZANU-PF may be surprised by the level of support for the opposition. In
2000, ZANU-PF won 57 of 120 elected seats. Mugabe directly appoints an
additional 30, making it extremely difficult for the opposition to win an
outright majority.

Although overt violence has declined in the run-up to
this election, opposition supporters say political intimidation, including
control of food aid during a year of severe shortages, remains rife,
especially in rural areas. Voter rolls may disenfranchise large numbers of
citizens, they say, and they fear vote-rigging.

"This is an election
where I think any result is possible," said Brian Kogoro, chairman of the
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a network of civil society organizations. He
emphasized, though, that an MDC win would not legitimize the
vote.

Young voters are a powerful voting demographic and a potential
center of post-election protest in case of a stolen election, although few
here believe there will be a popular uprising. Zimbabwe, like much of
Africa, is disproportionately young - those aged 15 to 29 comprise more than
half of the total adult population.

The government is well aware of
the power of young voters and has impressed tens of thousands into joining
youth militias, which human rights groups say have been responsible for what
politically motivated violence has occurred.

Like Matemadombo, Chari is
voting for the first time. Although eligible to participate in the 2002
presidential election, fear of political violence kept him from registering.
This year, he says he wants to help make change. Already he has stopped
listening to some of his favorite musicians because he feels they recorded
campaign songs for the wrong side.

"I'm excited," he said on the eve of
the balloting. "Tomorrow, anything can happen."

Hope, anxiety as Zimbabweans go to pollsMugabe power may
be eroding, many predictBy John Donnelly, Globe Staff | March 31,
2005

MABVUKU, Zimbabwe -- Sitting in a tiny room lit by a single overhead
bulb, three men said they had been arrested a total of 44 times by security
agents working for the government of President Robert Mugabe. They showed
scars on their faces, arms, and backs that they said the agents had
inflicted. Yet they insist they have grown ever more determined to end
Mugabe's 25-year reign.

On the eve of today's parliamentary election,
these opposition campaigners said they feel emboldened by a groundswell of
antigovernment sentiment after years of repressive crackdowns. Several
million Zimbabweans are expected to cast ballots today in an election that
many observers say could bring the first erosion of Mugabe's power since the
end of white- minority rule in this southern African country in
1980.

The two major questions are whether the main opposition party, the
Movement for Democratic Change, can for the first time win a plurality of
the seats at stake, and if not, whether the MDC supporters will mount
protests in the country's largest cities that mirror the wave of recent
popular uprisings in Ukraine, Lebanon, and Kyrgyzstan.

Many political
analysts in Zimbabwe are skeptical, believing that the vote will be neither
free nor fair, that Mugabe's party will keep control of Parliament -- and
that the country's army and police will violently disperse any mass public
demonstration that might follow.

Yet in Mabvuku, an opposition stronghold
20 miles outside the capital, Harare, feelings run deep about prospects for
change. ''If the MDC doesn't win, we will do something," said Cosmas Ndira,
30, a grass-roots leader for the MDC. ''We will resist. We will go forward
and fight for our country."

Last weekend, the Rev. Pius Ncube, the
Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo and one of Mugabe's fiercest critics, called
for a ''popular mass uprising" if voting is rigged in favor of the ruling
Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF. Ncube told his
Easter congregation, ''Somewhere, there shall come a resurrection for
Zimbabwe."

Mugabe, who helped lead the guerrilla war against the
white-led former government of Zimbabwe -- known then as Rhodesia -- called
Ncube a traitor. Mugabe repeatedly has said the vote will be fair, and he
has allowed in foreign journalists and election observers this time to watch
the balloting. He contends that the opposition movement has no actual
popular support and is a creation of those who oppose his years-long
campaign to redistribute wealth from the tiny white population to the
country's black majority.

But Ncube and other critics of Mugabe's rule
offer a litany of reasons for their dissent, including hundreds of arrests
and torture of opposition members; elections in 2000 and 2002 that
international observers said were rife with voter intimidation and
vote-rigging by the ruling party; four newspapers shut down in the past two
years; an unemployment rate of 70 percent; and annual inflation at 400 to
600 percent.

Of the Parliament's 150 seats, 120 are up for vote today;
Mugabe appoints the remaining 30. In 2000, the opposition MDC won 57 seats,
a surprisingly strong showing in its first election. Mugabe's position is
not at stake; he was reelected in 2002, and his term runs until
2008.

The outcome is so uncertain that diplomats and analysts are
predicting multiple postelection scenarios, from the MDC winning as few as
35 seats to as many as 85.

''If this was a free and fair process,
there would be an MDC tidal wave," said a Western diplomat in Harare,
speaking on condition of anonymity. The diplomat added that the biggest
concern is ''a manipulation of the voter rolls. A lot of tombstones will be
voting."

A total of 5.7 million Zimbabweans are on voter rolls, including
about 200,000 added in the past two weeks after registration for today's
elections had officially ended. The statistics department at the University
of Harare estimated the country of 12 million should have 4.6 million
voters.

The European Union and the United States have said it is highly
unlikely that the elections will be free or fair. But Reginald
Matchaba-Hove, director of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, an
independent group of election monitors, said he has been pleased with the
relatively peaceful electoral campaign, and he applauded most of the
safeguards put in place at the 8,000 polling places to reduce chances of
vote-rigging.

He said ''it's going to much more difficult to fudge" the
numbers compared with during previous elections, because ballots will be
counted at each polling station in front of monitors. His group, made up of
mostly of churches, trade unions, and student organizations, will field
nearly 7,000 accredited observers.

He said Mugabe's decision to open
up the electoral process gave the opposition a great opportunity. ''Mugabe
is a brilliant tactician in terms of survival . . . but I think he will eat
humble pie," he added.

Mugabe, 81, was not conceding anything yesterday
during a rally in Glen Dora, a community on the southern outskirts of Harare
that voted for an MDC candidate five years ago. Before an estimated 10,000
people, he danced along the edge of the crowd, vigorously shook hands, and
smiled broadly. A dwarf dancer swung her hips for him. The crowd, with
nearly everyone decked out in ZANU-PF shirts, roared.

Mugabe gave a
90-minute speech in the midday heat, reviewing minute policy
accomplishments, bashing President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of
Britain for interfering in Zimbabwean politics, and saying the country had
been unfairly maligned by foreign media.

''Even with our difficulties
we are far better than most African countries," Mugabe said. ''I want you to
show me people freer than here. They are not as free in the United States as
they are here. Show me the conditions of the blacks in the United States and
the standing of all the nonwhites in the economic sector. . . . It's a very
rare instance in which they are treated on equal footing as
whites."

Outside the grounds, Darlington Chirimanye, 35, a father of
four, said he supports ZANU-PF because it has helped many people reclaim
land, through property seizures from white farmers in the past five years.
He also hoped both sides accepted the outcome of the vote. ''Democracy
doesn't require people to go to the streets," Chirimanye said. ''It is down
to the ballot. It's going to be the best election we've had."

In
Mabvuku, people expressed a mixture of hope and resignation.

Albert
Gatsi, 58, a security officer at a hotel, said he and his dog were badly
beaten by security officers after the 2000 elections because his family
worked with the opposition. ''This Mugabe regime even beats dogs," he said,
with disgust in his voice. But he added that even if ZANU-PF rigs the
election, people will think twice about engaging in a
revolution.

''People have not taken to the streets before because they
are afraid of the army," Gatsi said. ''And if we have a demonstration now,
they will shoot -- with live ammunition."

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe is widely expected to
win Zimbabwe's election on Thursday but is given little chance of taking the
important province of Matabeleland, still bitter over an army offensive 20
years ago.

Failure to win the province would likely dash Mugabe's
bid for a two-thirds parliamentary majority that would enable him to modify
the constitution to favour his ZANU-PF party.

The province, in
Zimbabwe's southern region, has been a thorn in Mugabe's side ever since a
rebellion against his rule just two years after independence in
1980.

Asa Sibanda said she would vote for the opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) "because I was a victim of ZANU-PF cruelty"
during the army crackdown.

"We were made to lie down on the
ground and they whipped us," recalled the 82-year-old
grandmother.

"They tried to entice us to join them after the unity
accord but I will never support them," Sibanda told Reuters at her home in
the Insiza district of the provincial capital Bulawayo.

Civic
and human rights groups say the army clampdown spearheaded by a North
Korean-trained brigade killed 20,000 and poisoned the region's relations
with the central government.

The assault followed government
accusations that Matabeleland supported plans for an armed revolt against
Mugabe's rule led by a rival nationalist leader, Joshua Nkomo.

Matabeleland overwhelmingly supported the MDC in general

elections
in 2000 and a presidential vote in 2002.

The province's Roman
Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube is probably the most vocal domestic opponent
of Mugabe and ZANU-PF. A week before Thursday's election he said in a
newspaper interview Zimbabwe was ripe for a mass uprising against
Mugabe.

ETHNIC TENSIONS

That crackdown in the minority
Ndebele-speaking region fuelled ethnic tensions with the Shona -- who
dominate Mugabe's government -- that only subsided with a 1987 peace
pact.

Tensions have resurfaced with the expulsion from ZANU-PF of
Mugabe's former propaganda chief Jonathan Moyo -- a Ndebele -- after he
decided to stand as an independent in the polls in the most visible sign of
rifts within the ruling party.

Moyo has since accused ZANU-PF
of being run by a "clique of tribalists".

Analysts say Mugabe
has failed to ease Ndebele bitterness over the deaths and voters there
handed all but a couple of the 20 contested seats in 2000 parliamentary
polls to the MDC.

"ZANU-PF is not going to win Matabeleland because
ZANU-PF has not dealt with the fundamental question of apologising publicly
and unreservedly for the 1980s massacre of civilians," said Brian Kagoro,
chairman of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition that groups local rights
groups..

Analyst Eric Bloch forecast that ZANU-PF may win only 4 of
the region's 19 contested seats.

Jacob Songelwa, an 84-year-old
pensioner, said he would vote for the opposition as he was "tired of
ZANU-PF's broken promises".

"From 1980 we were never free here
because people were persecuted for supporting ZAPU," he said, referring to
the Ndebele dominated party of the late Joshua Nkomo which later merged with
ZANU-PF.

Harare - No Zimbabwean province has shown a satisfactory
election climate and hate speech, intimidation and threats have
characterised the campaigns for today's elections. These are the findings
given by the National Constitutional Assembly in its second report, released
yesterday. "According to the data received for March, 96% of constituencies
reported forms of political violence and 63% of the reports alleged that
torture took place," the report said. "Most of the victims are MDC
supporters (41%), with Zanu-PF supporters (14%), ordinary citizens (11%),
and civics (3%). The perpetrators are alleged to be Zanu-PF supporters
(52%), the militia (17%) and the police (17%), the Central Intelligence
Office (12%), and the army (8%). The MDC and war veterans were also
mentioned, but their figures were negligible." The report comes amid threats
by the police to arrest National Constitutional Assembly chairman Lovemore
Madhuku over the first report.

The National Constitutional Assembly
said it had sampled eight of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces between March 1 and 24.
"No data had been submitted from Manicaland or Masvingo by the time of
writing, but it is submitted that the data nonetheless do give a good
overview of the national picture in March. A total of 209 reports were
submitted, with an average of three to a constituency," the report said. The
incidence of political violence was worst in the Harare province and seemed
least in the Midlands. "It is evident that the trend... accords with the
observations of previous elections. Harare and the Mashonaland provinces
have shown more frequent instances of election irregularities than other
provinces. "Harare was particularly bad ... this shows that the battle is
really in the urban areas where the MDC has been the stronger of the two
main parties since 2000. Zanu-PF is confident that it has the rural votes in
the bag."

Although the police and President Robert Mugabe had called
for a violence-free election, the psychological damage caused by the
intimidation and threats following several years of physical violence and
torture could not guarantee a climate conducive to free and fair elections,
the National Constitutional Assembly said. Bases for trained Zanu-PF
militiamen remained in some constituencies. "In the urban areas, the bases
are reported to be at public halls, beer halls, schools, shopping centres,
and government institutions. This is something of a change from previous
elections when militia bases were more likely to be found in rural areas.
The presence of militia bases (has been) extremely important in recent
elections as there (has been) a decided correlation between their presence
and political violence and other irregularities in a constituency." Reports
about food being used for political leverage were also cause for concern.
"Of the constituencies sampled, 75% reported the political use of food."
Most of these reports said that presenting a Zanu PF party card "guarantees
food supplies". "In the run-up to a highly contentious election, and in the
context of a manifestly serious humanitarian crisis, reports that food is
being used as a threat must be immediately investigated. It is the view of
the National Constitutional Assembly that this election is now so seriously
flawed that there can be absolutely no confidence in the outcome."

Work is
continuing to counter the Zimbabwe government's jamming of the short-wave
frequencies. Please try the following frequencies up to and including Sunday
3 April: 3300 kHz in the 90m band, and 12145 kHz in the 25m band from 6pm to
9pm Zimbabwe time; 15145 kHz in the 19m band from 6pm to 8 pm; 11770 kHz in
the 25 m band from 8pm to 9pm. Please also see www.swradioafrica.com for up to date
information. The medium-wave broadcast between 5am and 7am each morning, at
1197 kHz, is not being jammed. Outside the broadcast area, listen over the
internet at www.swradioafrica.com .

Welshman Ncube, Zimbabwe's opposition MDC secretary-general, says
they are optimistic that Zimbabweans will turn out in large numbers to vote
in today's parliamentary elections. He has voted in the Bulawayo East
constituency, where many people are reportedly waiting in long queues to
cast their vote.

Pius Ncube, the outspoken Catholic Archbishop of
Bulawayo, has also cast his vote in Bulawayo East this
morning.

Meanwhile, the MDC says one of its candidates in today's
election has gone into hiding following intimidation by Zanu(PF) supporters.
Ncanyiso Maqeda, an MDC spokesperson, says Siyabonga Malundu, their
candidate in the town of Nzisa, north of Bulayawo, was forced to
flee.

Maqeda says truckloads of ruling party supporters descended on the
town yesterday. "Two truckloads attacked a group of MDC polling agents and
the candidates who were gathering to prepare for the deployment of polling
agents to the different polling stations.

"The full details of what
then happened after the attack are not clear because we have not been able
to establish contact with Malandu and his elections agents since last
night."

IN A lonely show of
support for Zimbabwean workers, several hundred South African trade
unionists gathered at the country's main Beit Bridge border crossing
yesterday to protest against human rights abuses and the suppression of
basic workers' rights in neighbouring Zimbabwe.

The
demonstration by the country's powerful Congress of South African Trade
Unions movement - one of the members of the tripartite alliance that makes
up the ruling African National Congress - contrasted starkly with President
Mbeki's official Zimbabwe policy of "quiet diplomacy" - now dubbed "See no
evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil".

Commentators have
contrasted the South African President's outbursts against anyone who even
mildly criticises his Government's policies - such as the recent
dressing-down he gave to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate -
with his embarrassing silence on events in Zimbabwe.

Some
say that the inaction by one of the few men with influence over President
Mugabe threatens South Africa's own democratic process and has undone much
of the good derived from the country's active participation in peace
initiatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast and, most
recently, Togo.

Mr Mbeki has sought to portray himself as the
champion of democracy and good governance in Africa, but his refusal to
criticise Mr Mugabe is believed to be rooted in his humiliating failure as
Deputy President in 1995 to persuade Sani Abacha, the Nigerian dictator, to
spare the life of the Nigerian activist and playwright Ken Saro Wiwa. That
was post-apartheid South Africa's first real foray into African politics and
a disaster.

Critics say that it is also his own
intolerant character, sharpened by bitter experiences as an ANC exile, that
has rendered him unable to criticise leading figures of the struggle to end
white minority rule in Africa - such as Mr Mugabe. They say that he is
terrified of laying himself open to taunts of being close to Western
imperialism.

"Our policy is not even-handed . . . it is
solidly supportive of the current regime. Our Government has repeatedly
issued statements supportive of the Zimbabwean authorities while remaining
silent about restrictions on opposition activity," Steven Friedman, senior
research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies, said.

"We could and should be really even-handed . . . and insist on the same
standards for Zimbabwean democracy that we rightfully demand for our own.
Support for Zimbabwe is eroding the promise of a new democratic start on the
continent and even threatens our own democratic progress."

So
far, the only public comment Mr Mbeki has made on the forthcoming poll is to
say that he has no reason to think it "will not be free and
fair".

Under his prompting, a delegation of monitors from the
South African Government is expected to bless the elections with the words
"sufficiently free and fair", despite mounting evidence to the
contrary.

Mr Mbeki's advance approval of a process that at
best is likely to be flawed has done serious damage to recent initiatives,
such as the New Partnership for Africa's Development, of which he is one of
the architects, to encourage good governance and economic growth on the
poorest continent.

"The collateral damage Zimbabwe has
inflicted on the region, if not on Africa as a whole, is immeasurable,"
Dumisani Muleya, the Harare correspondent of the South African Business Day
financial newspaper, wrote. "Those efforts depend on African leaders'
ability to tackle issues of democracy and governance in return for funding ,
but Mbeki and his colleagues have not fulfilled their side of the bargain.
Zimbabwe is the test case."

The South African National Editors' Forum (Sanef)
has expressed alarm on the eve of parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe that
the country's government "has failed to lift all restrictions on journalists
and media, especially foreign media".

In a statement by deputy
chairperson Liz Barrett and general secretary Hopewell Radebe, they said:
"While it appears that South African journalists have now all gained
accreditation to cover the elections from inside the country, it is clear
that the Zimbabwean government, by barring many foreign news organisations,
has not demonstrated a full commitment to the free flow of information
concerning the elections.

"These actions do not bode well for free and
fair parliamentary elections tomorrow. It suggests that the 'Burma syndrome'
- the attempt to prevent news from reaching the outside world - still
infects Zimbabwe."

Sanef noted that the Zimbabwean independent media and
correspondents based in the country continued to face harassment which had
an impact upon their ability to cover the election "without
hindrance".

"In addition, the State broadcaster, the Zimbabwean
Broadcasting Corporation, has not effectively opened up the airwaves to
opposition parties as the Zimbabwean government pledged to in the Southern
African Development Community guidelines for free and fair elections," Sanef
noted.

"Monitoring agencies report that the ruling Zanu-PF still enjoyed
a disproportionate amount of airtime across public television and radio. All
of this has meant that the media playing fields remained skewed for the
election campaign and suggests there is a lot of post-election work to do to
ensure a free and fair media in Zimbabwe."

Zimbabwean voters elect
120 seats out of a parliament of 150 seats today.

HARARE, Zimbabwe - President Robert Mugabe, widely accused of
rigging previous elections, predicted a huge victory Wednesday, the eve of
parliamentary elections. Opposition leaders urged supporters to go to the
polls in defiance of intimidation and fears of violence.The ballot pits
Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party against the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which won nearly half the seats
in the legislature five years ago in a stinging rebuke to the 81-year-old
leader.

Mugabe, increasingly isolated globally for repressive measures
during 25 years in power, said the election would prove once and for all
that Zimbabweans reject interference from the rest of the world.

But
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said the Mugabe regime's days are
numbered.

"The end is near. Five years of your efforts in fighting
against this illegitimate regime may be ending tomorrow," Tsvangirai told
some 4, 500 MDC supporters in the eastern Chimanimani region, where the
party candidate is the wife of a white opposition lawmaker jailed for
brawling with two government ministers.

At stake are 120 elected
seats. Mugabe appoints members to 30 other seats, virtually guaranteeing his
ZANU-PF party a majority.

Mugabe, pumping his arm while addressing more
than 10, 000 wildly cheering supporters at an opposition stronghold in the
capital, promised a free vote and predicted a "huge, mountainous
victory."

Mugabe accuses British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other
Western leaders of backing the 6-year-old MDC, the first party to seriously
challenge his rule. He dubbed today's vote the "anti-Blair
election."

Tsvangirai has said Mugabe, and not Blair, is to blame for
Zimbabwe's condition.

Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk 50 percent during
the past five years, and the unemployment rate is at least 70 percent.
Agriculture, the economic base of Zimbabwe, has collapsed and at least 70
percent of the population live in poverty.

Opposition leaders blame
the country's economic woes on the government's often-violent seizure of
thousands of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to black
Zimbabweans.

"The land is ours. It is not European," Mugabe told
reporters after a rally Tuesday. "We have given it to the right people."